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Hit Parade | Music History and Music Trivia
If You Love Sting, Set Him Free Edition Part 2
00:55:27
From the schoolroom to sophisti-pop, Sting’s genre-bending career is packed with hits.
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- [00:01]
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Chris Melanphy
Welcome back to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate magazine about the hits from coast to coast, I'm Chris Melanphy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One series. On our last episode, we covered the rise of a man born Gordon Sumner, better known as Sting, in the Police, the eclectic post punk band that made him famous. Sting wrote all of the hits and tried his hand at punk, reggae, new wave, synth pop and romantic balladry. Although the band's biggest hit, Every Breath youh Take, was not as romantic as it seemed, we're now in the mid-1980s. The police have quietly broken up after becoming rock's biggest band, and Sting is about to embark upon a solo career that's even more wide ranging and and genre unbound. After the Police went On hiatus in 1984, Sting started work on a solo album while making guest appearances on other Superstars records for Phil Collins, who was recording his soon to be 1985 blockbuster LP No Jacket Required, Sting provided counterpoint vocals on Phil's haunting ballad Long, Long Way to Go. On the 1984 All Star British charity single Do They Know It's Christmas by Band Aid, Sting was given a showcase slot harmonizing with Duran Duran's Simon Le Bon. Despite the song's serious intent providing relief for the starving in Ethiopia, Band Aid organizer Bob Gildoff took the piss out of his friend Sting by having him sing the eponymous lyric the Bitter Sting of Tears. A few months after Simon Le Bon harmonized with Sting, Le Bon invited Sting to add vocals to a track by Duran Duran's side project Arcadia. That's Sting chiming in on Arcadia's the Promise.
- [04:38]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Oh y.
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Chris Melanphy
But probably Sting's most profitable guest vocal in this period came on an album by the British band Dire Straits, led by songwriter and guitarist Mark Knopfler. Seriously, Sting probably could have retired off of his contribution to this number one smash alone.
- [05:15]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
I Want Money to.
- [05:26]
Chris Melanphy
Famously, Knopfler wrote Money for Nothing after observing some workmen at a New York appliance store, watching MTV and making snide remarks about how easy it must be to be a musician. While Dire Straits were recording the song for their fifth studio album, Brothers in Arms, at Air Studios on the island of Montserrat, Sting was also on the island vacationing. So Knopfler invited Sting to add harmony vocals to the song. Primarily, Sting took a couple of rounds of the song's chorus about hardware guys hauling appliances, but it was one additional vocal refrain that sounded Sting added to the front and back of the track that won him a co songwriting credit. He riffed on the slogan that he and the Police had yelled in that MTV ad a couple of years earlier, I want my mtv. Only as a bit of an inside joke, Sting sang I want my MTV to the tune of his own early MTV hit, the Polices Don't Stand so Close to Me. Sting's guest vocal took him all of an hour. However, when A and M Records got word not only that Sting was a guest on Money for Nothing, but that the Dire Straits song interpolated the melody of a Police hit, they insisted that Sting be added to the song's publishing credits. Money for Nothing and the Brothers in Arms LP wound up topping charts around the world, including in America, and sold more than 30 million copies. Sting even sang the song with Dire Straits at Live Aid.
- [08:03]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
I want my, I want my.
- [08:10]
Chris Melanphy
Like I said in Part one of our show, Sting leads a Charmed life. By the time he appeared at Live Aid in the early summer of 85, Sting had already released an album of his own. And one thing was certain, not much of it sounded like the Police. This is the Dream of the Blue Turtles, the title track from Sting's solo debut album. To Sting's Police fans, the LP read as a marked departure To Sting himself, it was a return to his roots as a jazz player in Newcastle. The major difference between his early 20s and his mid-30s, however, was the caliber of musician Sting could now hire to work with him. He didn't mess around assembling a band of seasoned jazz players, including pianist Kenny Kirkland, bassist Daryl Jones, drummer Omar Hakim and the crowning touch, acclaimed saxophonist Branford Marsalis. When the first single came out, the difference from the Police was stark. In the video, Sting was playing with all black performers, including R B backing vocalists Dolette McDonald and Janice Pendarvis. And that first single set the tone for the entire project. Jazzy pop with higher aspirations. If you love somebody, set them free. Props to Sting, he was using gender non binary they them pronouns way back in 1985 was intended by its songwriter as the antidote to Every Breath youh Take. Where the Police's blockbuster hit had been all about controlling the object of one's obsession, this song was quite literally about letting go. It was also a banger and a hit. If you love Somebody, Set Them Free not only rose to number three on the Hot 100 and number one on the album Rock chart, it even crossed over to the R and B chart, where it reached a a very respectable number 17. In fact, the Dream of the Blue Turtles, so named because Sting had had a dream about some blue Turtles. Hey, at least it made more sense than the Police's Zenyatta Mondatta not only rose to number two on the album chart, ratifying Sting as a solo act, it also generated four top 20 hits, each in a different style. If youf Love Somebody Set Them Free was jazzy R and B. The second single, as I noted at the top of our show, was the airy fortress around you'd Heart, a number eight hit that leaned toward what critics would later call sophistapop, akin to Roxy Music, the Style Council or Sade. For the third single, Sting went back to the reggae sound he'd pursued with the Police, only this time with an even more overtly tropical flavor. Rather than blending reggae with post punk, Love Is the Seventh Wave was sunny and bright, essentially a children's nursery rhyme. There is a deeper way than this. Love is the seventh wave reached number 17 on the Hot 100. In a cheeky move just before the song's fade out, Sting repeated some lyrics he'd lifted directly from Every Breath youh Take.
- [13:11]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
With Me. Every breath you.
- [13:18]
Chris Melanphy
Finally, for the fourth single from the Dream of the Blue Turtles, Sting went with the LP's most ambitious track, a cold war dirge decrying the specter of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It borrowed its melody from a classical piece by a Russian composer. Accordingly, the song was called Russians. Russians interpolated the romance theme from Sergei Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kizhaye Sweet. In the lyrics, Sting referenced former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, then current American president Ronald Reagan, and nuclear weapons scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Decades later, filmmaker Christopher Nolan said he was partially inspired to make his Oscar winning film Oppenheimer by the lyrics to Sting's Russians. Sting's anti nuance nuclear lament centered around the rhetorical line if the Russians love their children too, a lyric that some critics pilloried for its glibness. In interviews, Sting countered that of course he knew the Russians loved their children and the lyric was meant to be hyperbolic to emphasize the absurdity of nuclear war.
- [14:58]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Believe me when I said to you I hope the Russians love them.
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Chris Melanphy
In any case, Russians reached number 16 on the Hot 100 in early 1986, a sign of Sting's esteem by the pop audience and his momentum on the charts. Though some critics dinged the Dream of the Blue Turtles album for its pretensions, the LP quickly went double platinum and eventually triple platinum. The public was down with Sting's highfalutin pop concepts. In the late 80s, Sting would use this cultural capital in a couple of ways. For one thing, he took on causes that meant something to him. In 1986 he co headlined Amnesty International's Conspiracy of Hope tour alongside such socially conscious stars as U2 and Peter Gabriel. For the tour, he even got the police to briefly reunite for some dates. It was a short lived reunion for a good cause. Then in 1987, Sting and Trudy Styler founded the Rainforest Foundation Fund to help protect the Amazon and defend the rights of its indigenous peoples, a cause Sting is still associated with to this day.
- [16:40]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
This is the rainforest in 1900 and this is the rainforest today. And this is the rainforest in 30 years if present trends continue. It's all gone, the lungs of the earth destroyed.
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Chris Melanphy
And musically, Sting used his cultural capital to push more sophisticated concepts onto the pop charts. His second album would sound even more upmarket than Blue Turtles. Was that second album nothing like the sun, named after the opening line in a Shakespeare sonnet, came out in the fall of 87. As if indicating Sting's preferred demographic, the hour long album was the length of a single cd, but two vinyl albums at a time when the compact disc was considered the more upscale 80s yuppie product. Ironically, this perception has been reversed in the age of the 21st century vinyl renaissance. Digitally recorded and sonically pristine, Nothing like the Sun Sounded like it was made for CD. Musically, Nothing like the sun positioned Sting as pop's prince of sophistication, a world beat icon and rock's social conscience. Heady stuff, but at the urging of his record label, Sting led off promotion of the album's release with its most accessible confection, the pop funk jam We'll Be Together. As I noted in our advertising hits episode of Hit Parade, We'll Be Together was so accessible it started out as a jingle Sting wrote for a Japanese beat commercial. We'll Be Together reached number seven on the pop chart and even cracked the top 40 on the R B chart, but nothing else on Nothing like the sun sounded like it. The album's second single, Be Still My Beating Heart, was closer to the ethereal, high toned sophista pop on the rest of the cd. Again, because Sting was Sting, it did well on the charts anyway, reaching number 15 on the Hot 102 on the album rock chart.
- [19:38]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Stop it for the stop He's Still My be too.
- [19:54]
Chris Melanphy
And though it did not chart well at the time, the album's jazzy, jaunty third single, Englishman in New York, only a number 84 hit on the Hot 100, has gone on to become the Spotify standard from this 80s sting period, with nearly half a billion streams. Maybe that's because it's secretly a bop as well as a quiet LGBTQ anthem. Sting wrote Englishman in New York as a loving profile of gender non conforming gay icon Quentin Crisp, who appears in the music video. The song's centerpiece is the lyric be yourself no matter what they say. Classy music and progressive politics. That was what late 80s Sting was selling. He slipped socially conscious lyrics into songs across the album, including History Will Teach Us Nothing, the gentle anti war anthem Fragile and They Dance Alone Cueca Solo, a protest song against Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.
- [21:33]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Dancing with their songs Dancing with the Husband.
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Chris Melanphy
Critics opinions on Sting's high art pop ranged widely. Rolling Stone rated Nothing like the sun one of the 100 best albums of the 1980s, while Trouser Press critic Ira Robbins called it a tedious, bankrupt and vacuous cavern of an album. Was Sting now rock's most elite craftsman or its purveyor of effete brunch music? In a way, both sides were right. We'll be back momentarily. This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Fiscally responsible financial geniuses, Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds because Progressive offers discounts for paying in full, owning a home and more. Plus, you can count on their great customer service to help you when you need it. So your dollar goes a long way. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save on car insurance, Progressive Casualty Insurance company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. 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As sting entered the 1990s and his 40s, his sound would begin to evolve. His third album, 1991's the Soul Cages, was a transitional work, the last gasp of 80s sting and his jazzy, moody melancholy rock. The album's first single, all this Time, was a case in point. On the surface, it was a jaunty pop song, one of his friendliest hits. Featuring a lead melody line played by a mandolin, it reached number five on the Hot 100 in March of 91 and number one on the Modern rock chart. However, a close listen to the lyrics revealed that the song was actually about Sting's deceased father, who had passed since his previous album. The first few verses describe a funeral, then Sting imagines a burial at sea, and the song climaxes with Sting asking father, if Jesus exists, then how come he never lived here? Indeed, the entire Soul Cage's album abounded with references to death and Sting's childhood, including the shipyards he grew up around. The album's title track, for example, a brooding rocker with guitar from Sting's longtime backing player Dominic Miller told a tale of a quote, child locked in the fisherman's yard and asked, where is the child with his father's eyes? The Soul Cages. The song reached number seven on Billboard's album rock chart in April 1991. But then, after getting the Soul Cages out of his system, Sting began to pivot toward less cerebral, more middle brow music. The shift manifested in two categories, movie music and romantic balladry. In the movie category, Sting in 1992 was asked to contribute a song to the soundtrack of the summer blockbuster lethal weapon 3. He teamed up with Eric Clapton for the no frills guitar and sax rocker It's probably me, a top 20 album rock hit. It was the closest Sting had ever come to a basic blues. I had to say it, I had to say, but it's probably me. Then Sting brought the romance. In the winter of 1993, he released his fourth solo album, 10 Summoners Tales. The title was the most scholarly thing about the CD, a cross between the Summoner, a character in Chaucer's medieval masterwork the Canterbury Tales, and a pun on Sting's real last name, Sumner. Despite those PBS worthy trappings, 10 Summoner's Tales was Sting's gushiest, most VH1 friendly album to date. Chock a block with unabashed love songs, Sting admitted he was trying to write sunnier pop music after the darkness of the Soul Cages. The first single from 10 Summoner's Tales, the Syrupy love song if I Ever Lose My faith, reached number 17 on the Hot 100 in May of 93. Basically, this was adult contemporary radio pop in Renaissance Fair clothing. That was even more true of Fields of Gold, which paired courtly lyrics about undying love in rolling hills of barley with some of Sting's smoothest music on the Hot 100 in the summer of 93, Fields of Gold did okay, peaking at number 23 at a time when the airwaves were dominated by grunge rock, gangsta rap and club music. Sting's chivalrous peons to undying devotion were never going to top the pop charts. But on Billboard's adult contemporary chart, if I Ever Lose My Faith hit the top 10 and Fields of Gold spent a month at number two. Sting's audience was always a dark adult. Now it was primarily adult contemporary, with all the unhip signifiers that indicated college radio, alternative and even some mainstream rock stations basically stopped playing Sting not long after 10 Summoner's Tales. But over the long term, this AC sting has proven to be his most popular Mode. As of 2025, Fields of Gold is Sting's most played solo single ever, both on the radio and Spotify and 10 Summoner's Tales is among his highest certified LPs at Triple Platinum. Say this for Sting, he knows the marketplace. By the end of 93, Sting's pivot toward romance set him up for the biggest hit of his solo career, which was both a love song and a movie song. Only it wasn't really solo. Sting was one of three singers, all with husky voices and an ear for corn.
- [31:37]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Cause when it's all for love, it's.
- [31:41]
Chris Melanphy
One for all all for Love, a song from the 1993 Disney live action movie The Three Musketeers, was shameless Hollywood product and an attempt to make lightning strike twice. You may recall that in 1991, Brian Ashley Adams recorded the year's biggest hit with Everything I Do, I Do it for you, a soundtrack song from the Kevin Costner summer blockbuster movie Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves. Sorry to put this earworm back in your brain. We'll keep it brief. So when the Three Musketeers came along, the film's producers hired Bryan Adams and the production team behind I Do it for you to repeat the formula and score another stately ballad for another medieval style popcorn movie, this time in keeping with the story of Alexandre Dumas, Three Musketeers. Adams decided it would make more sense to if the song were sung by three voices, not just him. So he organized a rasp off, bringing in fellow gravelly power belters Sting and Rod Stewart to vocalize alongside him. And so, of course, this schlocky Three Musketeers song also went to number one. Just like Bryan Adams's earlier Robin Hood song, Stereogum's Tom Bryan, writer of their Number Ones column, calls all for Love, quote, a song that begs to be forgotten. Pure filler, it means nothing, unquote. But In January of 1994, when the song reached the top of the Hot 100, it became Sting's only post Police number one hit. Was Sting slumming it, recording a hit that was beneath him? Sure. Arguably. But after all of his gushy love songs on 10 Summoner's Tales, all for Love wasn't that big a stretch. Sting never returned to the pop top 10 after all for Love. But he continued to do just fine for the rest of the 1990s, turning out several more platinum albums and the occasional adult contemporary hit song. He also kept dabbling across genres. For example, on his 1996 album Mercury Falling, Sting included the track I'm so Happy I Can't Stop Crying, his first major attempt at writing country music. Sting's original version of the song was only a minor hit, peaking at number 94 on the Hot 100 pop chart. But one year later, actual country star Toby Keith decided to take a crack at it and invited Sting to join him. That version of I'm so Happy I Can't Stop Crying Recording, recorded in Nashville with country instrumentalists, was an actual country hit, peaking at number two on Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart. Or later that same year on a completely different chart. On the occasion of another compilation CD of the Police's greatest hits, Sting invited Sean Combs, AKA Puff Daddy to remix the band's very first hit, Roxanne. The quirky result featured DJ scratching samples from Utfo's 80s rap classic Roxanne Roxanne and rap bars from Pras of the Fuji. Sting even made a cameo in the music video officially titled Roxanne 97 Puff Daddy Remix and credited to Sting and the Police. The track made the R and B chart where it reached number 20, Sting's first R& B hit since We'll Be Together a decade earlier, and it even appeared on Hot Rap Singles, peaking at number five. So late 90s, Sting was on the country chart and the rap chart. What genre could bring him back to the pop top 40? It turned out it was a flirtation with Arabic music and a little electronica. On his 1999 album Brand New Day, Sting included a collaboration with Algerian singer Cheb Mami, a vocalist of the Arabic folk music known as Rai. Sting had grown enamored of Mommy's voice and co wrote Desert Rose specifically to showcase Mommy's vocals alongside Sting's own. The song, which begins with Cheb Mami singing in Arabic and even features Sting singing in a mix of English and Arabic alongside a swirl of electronic production, took months to catch on. At one point, carmaker Jaguar licensed Desert Rose to play in some of its commercials, which pushed American radio programmers to try the song on their airwaves. It finally debuted on the Hot 100 in May of 2000,000. Desert Rose became the biggest sleeper hit of Sting's career and the unlikeliest. It spent 26 weeks half a year on the high Hot 100, rising to number 17 on the pop chart and sending Sting's Brand New Day album into the top 10 for the first time, where it went double platinum yet again. Again, things just seem to work out for Sting. We'll be right back. When the world is on fire, what can music actually do? For the answer, check out the new podcast from Audible. Fela Kuti Fear no man. Be sure to stick around to the end of this episode for a preview of the series. In his first project post Radiolab, Jad Abumrad recounts the true story of Fela Kuti, the classically trained Nigerian musician who pioneered the Afrobeat sound and inspired one of the great political awakenings in music. Featuring interviews with Fela Kuti's family, historians and luminaries like IO Adebri, David Byrne, Brian Eno, Santi Gold and Barack Obama, this compelling mix of oral history, musicology, deep dive journalism and cutting edge sound design explores the transformative power of art and the role artists can play in this current moment of global unrest. Hang around till the end of this episode to get a sneak peek of this new series and then listen to Fela Kutcher Fear no Man on Audible or wherever you get Podcasts.
- [41:12]
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- [42:14]
Chris Melanphy
T for teen heading toward the 21st century what was keeping Sting current and relevant were samples and interpolations by the hip hop community. This started even before Puff Daddy. The Police in particular were a very groove oriented group thanks to Sting's prominent bass lines and Andy Summers hypnotic guitar riffs, so several rappers made use of those grooves. For example, in 1992, Bay Area rapper Spice One took the police's beloved 1980 deep cut Shadows in the Rain and rapped over it on his track 1-800-SPICE. Four years later, Missy Elliot was producing the hip hop influencer R B Girl Group 702, and she transformed another 1980 Police Jam Voices Inside My Head into the underlying beat for 702's hit hit Steelo, a number 12 R B hit and a top 40 pop hit in 1996. But obviously, as I noted, near the top of our show, the ultimate Police sample was the massive Puff Daddy hit I'll Be Missing you, in which Sean Combs memorialized his friend Biggie Smalls over an interpolation of Every Breath youh Take. In the summer of 1997, I'll be missing youg spent 11 weeks on top of the hot 100, three weeks longer than Every Breath youh Take itself had in 1983.
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Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
It's kinda hard what you not around know you in heaven Smiling down watching us while we pray for you Every.
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Chris Melanphy
Day we pray for you Host Puff Daddy Sting and Police samples became a coveted element of major hip hop acts with large sampling budgets because, as you can imagine, those Sting samples don't come cheap. Whether it was Talib Kweli rapping over Every little thing she does is magic.
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Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
People let me paint a picture you know I ain't a Christian, I ain't a Muslim, ain't a Jew I'm losing my religion I speak to God directly I know my God respect me cause he let me breathe his air the.
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Chris Melanphy
Posthumous Tupac single When Thugs Cry, which rides a sample of Stings fragile we don't shed tears, we shed blood do you still want to be a thug? Or the Black Eyed Peas track Union, which used so much of Englishmen in New York, they were compelled to add a featuring Sting artist credit on the.
- [45:56]
Arc Raiders Game Advertiser
Track and understand that we all just.
- [45:58]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
The same for when I count of.
- [46:00]
Arc Raiders Game Advertiser
Three let's change.
- [46:04]
Chris Melanphy
One for all. But the Sting sound also shaped millennial and Zoomer pop hits in unpredictable ways. Consider Bruno Mars 2012 one smash locked out of Heaven as we discussed in our Bruno Mars episode of Hit Parade, Locked out of Heaven isn't a Sting sample or even an interpolation. It's a style imitation of the Police. This is not a secret, by the way. Mars has admitted in interviews he was a huge Police fan and Heaven was his attempt to write his own Police track without jacking any specific song song. It's a deft simulacrum of the Police's blend of reggae and new wave, and Mars even does a spot on impression of Sting's high keening falsetto vocals. And as far as anyone knows, Sting wasn't paid a penny for Bruno Mars hit. But Sting did endorse it at the 2013 Grammy Awards during a medley of reggae inspired hits across rock history, Mars and his band performed Locked out of Heaven, which had topped the charts just weeks earlier. And then Sting emerged on stage to perform perform the song with Mars. Clearly Sting was down with younger pop stars imitating him. Actually, 2012 was a good year in general for imitation Sting hits. The year's top song, Gaultier's Somebody that I Used to Know, was widely compared by many critics and pop fans to the ethereal sound of solo Sting. Again, Gaultier didn't borrow any specific Sting song. More the Sting aura Later in the decade, Sting made his big crossover into the Zoomer generation thanks to another very prominent sample from the late Soundcloud rapper Juice Wrld. In 2018, Juice scored his biggest hit ever, the heavily emo sung rap smash Lucid Dreams. Lucid Dreams topped the R and B hip hop chart, reached number two on the Hot 100 and is one of the most played songs in Spotify history at nearly 3 billion streams. Sting has quipped in interviews that Lucid Dreams will put his grandkids through college because it is built out of a sample of Shape of My Heart, a track from his lushly romantic 1993 album 10 Summoner's Tales. He deals with cards as a meditation. Shape of My Heart has had a remarkable afterlife. It was a single back in 1993, but not a big hit, no chart appearances in America and Even in the UK it peaked below the top 50. But it has proven a very enduring source of samples used by everyone from American rapper Nas, Fake thug, no love.
- [50:38]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
You get the slug CB4 gusto, your luck though I didn't know till I.
- [50:42]
Chris Melanphy
Was drunk though to British girl group Suga Babes, to UK garage slash R B singer Craig David.
- [51:01]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
Sometimes in life you feel the fight is over.
- [51:12]
Chris Melanphy
Here's the other interesting thing about Shape of My Heart. It's the only track on the 10 Summoner's Tales album where Sting shares songwriting credit. His longtime guitarist Dominic Miller created the entrancing guitar riff that powers the song. Sting only added lyrics to that rifle riff. So in an act of generosity or just an acknowledgement of reality, Sting shares publishing on the song with Miller. And with all those samples, the Juice World sample alone is worth millions. Hopefully it's putting Miller's grandkids through college, too. One wonders if Sting had come to a similar arrangement back in the day with Andy Summers for his unmistakable guitar riff on Every Breath youh Take, whether that song would even be in a courtroom today. Food for thought. The Police's interpersonal relations have waxed and waned over the years. Summers actually played guitar on several Sting solo songs in the late 80s, and Sting returned the favor by playing bass and singing on a few Summers projects in the 90s. Then in 2007, Sting, Summers and Stuart Copeland put together a full global reunion tour that made more than 150 dates around the world through 2008. The two year trek was the third highest grossing tour in history at the time and still ranks within the top 20 all time. The three policemen Stan mostly got along during the tour, even after Copeland posted online critiquing all of their onstage mistakes. Presumably, relations are a lot frostier 17 years later as the Every Breath youh Take lawsuit makes its way through the legal system and Sting. At this point, he does whatever he wants, whether that's rearranging his Police hits for a symphony, as on his 2010 album Symphonicity, with the Royal Philharmonic Concert Orchestra teaming with dancehall hitmaker Shaggy for an entire reggae album. Seriously, the Sting and Shaggy album cracked the top 40 on the Billboard 200 in 2018. Or inviting select fans to his Tuscan villa annually for a series of intimate acoustic concerts. And of course, every year he plays the biggest hit he ever wrote. It's understandable that Sting feels proprietary commentary about every breath you take. You would too, if you'd written the biggest song in radio history, but hearing the former Gordon Sumner play it at a Tuscan villa puts his improbable life in even sharper relief. Wouldn't we all like that kind of good fortune? Sure, but Sting is equal parts legitimate talent, ran raw ambition and getting the best from his collaborators. Not everybody can do that. Like his name, Sting's career is singular. I hope you enjoyed this episode of of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfi. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis, our supervising producer is Joel Meyer, and the executive producer of Slate Podcasts is Mia Lobel. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts. In addition, defining it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the Hit Parade back your way. Until then, keep on marching on the one I'm Chris Melanfy.
- [57:09]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Oh can't you.
- [57:10]
Chris Melanphy
See.
- [57:13]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
You belong to me? I'm a poor heart.
- [57:21]
Chris Melanphy
With every step.
- [57:22]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
You take, every move you make.
- [57:29]
Jad Abumrad
Every.
- [57:30]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
Vibe you break, there was smiling.
- [57:37]
Chris Melanphy
This episode is brought to you by Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks makes it easy to find the perfect gifts and holiday looks that suit your personal style. The holidays can be a lot of things exciting, relaxing, heartwarming, and, yes, sometimes even a little stressful. That's why you need Saks.com Saks makes holiday shopping easy, stress free, and most importantly, fun. Whether it's for yourself, your family and friends, or even the pickiest person on your list, you can feel confident going into this holiday season knowing that Saks is there to help you find inspiration. Curate a holiday wish list, pick out gifts for your loved ones and have a look ready for whatever might come your way. Whether it's an office holiday party, a cozy night in, or a vacation getaway, Saks has everything you need. If you're looking for shopping to be personalized and easy this holiday season, then head to Saks Fifth Avenue for inspiring ways to shop for everyone on your list. Earlier in this episode, you heard about a new podcast from Audible called Fela Kuti Fear no Man. It's a deep dive into the soul of Afrobeat that explores the transformative power of art and the role artists can play in this current moment of global unrest. Here's a sneak peek of host Jad Abumrad setting the stage for who Fela was and how he came to lead one of the great political awakenings in music.
- [59:32]
Jad Abumrad
How do you describe Fela to someone who doesn't know?
- [59:35]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
I've played around. I've done it a million times. I don't know if any time has worked. Like, I'll go. Fela is like Bob Marley and Mandela combined. Well, he was kind of like Mick Jaggert and James Brown, definitely with some Ahmed Ali thrown in and then with a protest element of Dylan. Don't forget Malcolm X.
- [59:56]
Chris Melanphy
You want to be Malcolm X.
- [59:57]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
Brothers and sisters, the secret of life is to have no fear. We all have to understand that.
- [60:11]
Chris Melanphy
He.
- [60:11]
Fela Kuti Documentary Interviewee
Was the hardest shit you've ever heard in your life.
- [60:15]
Jad Abumrad
This is Fela Couti. Fear no Man Chapter 2 Becoming Fila Here's a question. How do you become that person.
- [60:34]
Interjecting Listener or Co-host
That.
- [60:34]
Jad Abumrad
Flea was just describing?
- [60:36]
Fela Kuti Documentary Interviewee
You know, it's as hard as the hardest hip hop track, the hardest jazz track, the hardest deepest punk rock or metal or death metal. Whatever it is that you're into as a kid, whatever music you love and you think captures the just the like, spirit of, of rebellion and of caring about, you know, a scary world that you can get lost in and hurt in.
- [61:02]
Chris Melanphy
It's all there for Flea.
- [61:04]
Jad Abumrad
It's Flea of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
- [61:05]
Fela Kuti Documentary Interviewee
It's magical music.
- [61:08]
Jad Abumrad
Fela is the epitome of a musician whose music matters. In fact, his music was so dangerous to the people in power in Nigeria that they threw him in jail not once, not twice, but a hundred times.
- [61:23]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
I want to see the police beating.
- [61:25]
Chris Melanphy
It's terrible.
- [61:26]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
I'll show you. You must see it.
- [61:28]
Jad Abumrad
Look at it in this famous clip. Fela is dressed only in his bikini briefs. He turns and shows the camera his back which is covered in wounds and gashes. Almost a hash pattern over and over. The Nigerian police and army broke his arms, his legs, his face.
- [61:45]
Fela Kuti Documentary Interviewee
You know they threw his mother from the roof of her house and she died.
- [61:49]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
Threw my mother out of window.
- [61:51]
Fela Kuti Documentary Interviewee
He went and took his mother's coffin and put it on the doorstep of the government building, the capitol building.
- [61:58]
Jad Abumrad
No matter what they did, he never backed down.
- [62:00]
Music or Song Lyric Vocalist
If you think I'm going to change or compromise, they're making me stronger.
- [62:04]
Fela Kuti Documentary Interviewee
I mean he was wild.
- [62:06]
Chris Melanphy
What a rebel.
- [62:07]
Jad Abumrad
So that's the question. How did he become that guy?
- [62:11]
Chris Melanphy
You can listen to more Felikuti Fear no man on Audible or wherever you get your podcasts.